Artwork for sale, and so is building / Defenestration site still vacant after over 16 years

Amelia Glynn, Special to The Chronicle

Published
4:00 am PDT, Sunday, September 10, 2006

Local artist Brian Goggin works on the Defenestration Building, also known as the Hugo Hotel. The building at Sixth and Howard streets in San Francisco has been vacant more than 16 years. Chronicle file photo, 1997, by Brant Ward less

Local artist Brian Goggin works on the Defenestration Building, also known as the Hugo Hotel. The building at Sixth and Howard streets in San Francisco has been vacant more than 16 years. Chronicle file photo, ... more

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Local artist Brian Goggin works on the Defenestration Building, also known as the Hugo Hotel. The building at Sixth and Howard streets in San Francisco has been vacant more than 16 years. Chronicle file photo, 1997, by Brant Ward less

Local artist Brian Goggin works on the Defenestration Building, also known as the Hugo Hotel. The building at Sixth and Howard streets in San Francisco has been vacant more than 16 years. Chronicle file photo, ... more

Artwork for sale, and so is building / Defenestration site still vacant after over 16 years

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The Hugo Hotel, or Defenestration Building as it's known to many for artist Brian Goggin's site-specific sculpture, has stood vacant on the corner of Sixth and Howard streets for more than 16 years.

Created in 1997 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Goggin's display of distorted, street-salvaged furniture and appliances (more than 30 pieces in all) still hangs in suspended animation out of the windows and from the walls of the abandoned four-story tenement building. (Defenestration means the act of throwing something or someone out of a window.)

The project was green-lighted by Sumati Patel, daughter of the building's owner, David Patel, who loved the idea as long as Goggin ensured the sculpture's engineering was sound.

According to the artist's Web site, www.defenestration.org, the sculpture can be purchased for "a mere $100,000," although he encourages visitors to buy both the sculpture and the building. His site still lists the outdated bargain price of $2.5 million.

Originally purchased in 1964 for $400,000, the low-income apartment building known as the Hugo Hotel was run by the Patel family for 25 years. Today, a flowery, hand-painted for-sale sign on the Hugo property still advertises a phone number for "interested parties" to call, although Sumati Patel's sister, Varsha Patel, general manager of the Ramada Inn Limited (also owned by their father), declined to supply the name of the real estate broker who is handling its sale or the current asking price for the building.

Patel cites the building's 50-foot height restriction as a way for the city to keep her property's value low. "It is unfair that I don't have the same development opportunities as everyone else," she says by way of explanation for the property's dilapidated state.

According to Patel, the building has garnered "a lot of interest" from developers over the years, but, "When they learn the problems with the city's height restrictions, they immediately back off." Patel claims her family wants to develop the property or sell it. "We're not deadbeats. I've been talking about the zoning restrictions with the city for seven years now. It's not a secret,"

Because the building, which is not considered historic, is more or less gutted, bringing it up to code would cost millions. The Hugo's fate probably will fall into the hands of developers who will tear it down and rebuild a market-rate development.

In early 2005, a developer from a Bay Area company (who requested that he remain anonymous) matched the Patels' asking price of $4.6 million. He and his company planned to build 20 1,000-square-foot condos, and 10 ground-floor storefronts. "Height limitation wasn't so much of a hindrance as the fact that the sellers didn't appear very motivated," he says of the failed deal.

The city's latest Eastern Neighborhoods zoning draft recommends that the Planning Department rezone all main streets South of Market (including Howard and Sixth) to allow heights of 85 feet so more affordable housing can be built, although it is still subject to environmental reviews.

This may be good news for the Patels -- and the city. After waiting nearly two decades, what's one more year?

And what will become of the Defenestration sculpture when the Hugo is redeveloped? "People come from all over the world to see this building," Goggin says. "It's been integrated into the street's culture and has become its own unique character."

Goggin never dreamed his work would stay up for this long and would love to see the sculpture remain (with a slight face-lift, including a strobe light for the television.) He's also OK with taking it down and auctioning off the pieces individually to help fund the dismantling.

Understandably, finding it another home in the city at this point feels more than a little daunting to the artist. "I'm making a lot of other sculptures right now," he says. "I want to give this one as much support as a parent would a child, but would rather move forward than revisit something I've already made."